Posted in: Anime, Comics, Manga, TV | Tagged: anime, GTO, J-drama, kodansha, manga, Tohru Fujisawa

GTO Creator Frustrated at Publisher for Favoring TV Special Over Manga

GTO creator Tohru Fujisawa is frustrated with publisher Kodansha for favoring a upcoming live-action TV special while suspending the manga

GTO, the hit manga series about a former bike gang member who becomes a maverick high school teacher, is getting a new live-action television special in Japan this year, but original creator Tohru Fujisawa, who writes and draws the series with his studio, is not happy with his publisher Kodansha about it. It seems like the publisher is allegedly making the TV special a greater priority and neglecting the current manga series GTO: Paradise Lost.

The new live-action special, called GTO Revival, was announced for a Spring 2024 premiere, will feature Takashi Sorimachi, the original star of the 1998 hit live-action series, as Eikichi Onizuka, a former juvenile delinquent and biker gang member who decides to become a high school teacher, not for any noble reason, but because he wanted to date high school girls. GTO is an anagram for "Great Teacher Onizuka." Yeah… nobody doesn't think that's creepy, and the series' sexism was off the charts. However, Onizuka discovers that he has a conscience and morals after all, and instead of trying to sleep with high school students, ends up spending his time helping troubled students and saving them again and again. Onizuka is a 22-year-old virgin when he becomes a teacher, and he never ever loses his virginity in the series because saving kids becomes more important to him than getting laid. Onizuka was frequently the butt of the jokes and suffered every time he tried to indulge in his horniness. It might be a bit weird to see Sorimachi play 20-something Onizuka again, especially since he is very much way beyond his twenties at this point, but who are we to judge? Anyway, Fujisawa tweeted his discontent with how his manga series was currently being handled by Kodansha:

"I'm glad that GTO is coming back after such a long time, but the final chapter of GTO, "Paradise Lost," which was published in Kodansha's Young Magazine, was kicked out of the magazine midway through and is currently on hiatus, and when it comes to dramas, it always comes to the fore.・What do you think of a company like this? I wonder if some other publisher will take over the copyright…"

In its heyday, the original GTO manga ran from 1997 to 2002, lasting a total of twenty-five collected volumes, and spawned sequel series GTO: 14 Days in Shonan in 2009, two spinoff manga series, and the latest sequel series GTO: Paradise Lost that launched in 2014. It spawned an anime series in 1999 (available on Crunchyroll) and a 43-episode hit live-action series in 1998 that made Takashi Sorimachi a star in Japan. The last new chapter of GTO: Paradise Lost ran on February 13 in Weekly Young Magazine 2023 Issue No. 11, where it was announced that the series would go on hiatus with an expected return date of early summer 2023. It doesn't seem to be back, hence Fujisawa's frustration. It's rare for a mangaka to publicly voice a problem they're having with their publisher in Japan, so this is kind of a storm in the manga industry.

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